Another idea for a new website: from the consulting room

Dr Neil Paul has come up with a number of ideas for new websites in his regular columns for the NHS Resource Centre. Now, he’d like a map of local third sector services, along with a wiki for more information and perhaps a comment function for users...

In previous columns, I have talked about some of my ideas for websites aimed at NHS staff. There was the NHS wiki idea, which would let people share best practice by creating topics and letting others change or add to them.

And there was the equivalent of LinkedIn, which would let NHS staff form better networks and, once again, share knowledge and skills. Both ideas are aimed at managing the massive beast that is the NHS and trying to reduce the duplication that goes on.

Problems 
 

Speaking to two of my patients, who work in health or related services, has made me think that another website is needed as well.   

One of the two has a mother with early dementia. This patient is a senior executive at an acute hospital in a neighbouring primary care trust, so they are very well clued up and connected when it comes to services in that area. But they know almost nothing about services around here, and have been struggling to find out about so called ‘third sector’ services that might be able to help.

For disease specific information, I find www.patient.co.uk fantastic - and I notice that it has recently added photos to a lot of its patient information leaflets. The leaflets – which can be printed off from my EMIS GP system during a consultation - are great and often have national charity contact details on them. However, they don’t include local information.
The other patient turned out to be deputy chief executive of a large charity in nearby Stoke. The charity provides all sorts of day care and carers for patients with certain disease groups, and it sounded like it offers a great service.

However, she told me a tale of woe about how difficult it was to get healthcare professionals to know about her organisation. It had tried some ‘push’ marketing - offering to go into practices to talk about its services - but was usually turned down. Very frustrating.

I gave her some tips on how to access GPs. But we also discussed the ‘pull’ side and agreed things weren’t great. I told her that when I wanted information, I found it hard to find it quickly and reliably. We then discussed the idea of an electronic directory of third sector services, open to both doctors and the public.

Possible answers

My idea is that this would work like one of the common mapping programs on the Internet. You would type in your postcode and have flags appear of all the local services that covered your area. Click a flag, and you’d get contact details and a link to their websites.

You could filter by keyword, such as elderly, dementia, learning disabilities and so on. The new site could even link to a wiki-style set of pages hosted by the NHS, on which organisations could put information about diseases and services.
Organisations wouldn’t then need to host or create their own sites; just maintain or edit pages that were of relevance to them. To protect the site from idiots who wanted to delete or change the data, only recognised groups could be given access and editing could be password protected. This could all be done by a PCT - or even organised nationally.

We are constantly being told at the moment that the NHS is short of money, so why would it invest in this? Well, it would make the life of my first patient much easier. And if my second patient is right, her organisation and those like it take work off the NHS - yet we are under using them.

Further refinements

You could even get clever and ask public health people to put some public health data on the map, and then match it to needs and services. That way, you’d be able to see where the problem areas are, and generate evidence for planners and commissioners.
 

You might let local ‘expert patients’ put their experiences or advice on the sites, or even list them as a resource with a flag of their own. If we were feeling brave, we could let people comment on the services in the way that people comment on books and films on Amazon - although the comments might need moderation.

At a recent patient panel meeting, I was trying to explain practice based commissioning. I was asked how the patient panel could they get involved and what could they do to help – given that they have limited time and resources.

Well, it strikes me that they are the perfect people to help organise some of this. They have a vested interest in their locality. They could invite in all the third sector agencies and make sure all are included, listen to their pitch and understand their services, then vet the information that goes on the wiki pages for accuracy and relevance and moderate the comments.

If anyone has experience of directories or running wiki pages, or knows how I can pilot one on the cheap for my area, please let me know...